Abstract
Although the craftsmen are a scarce commodity in the Czech Republic, very few parents would like their children to learn the craftsmanship/ vocational education trajectory (VET) there. According to Korbel and Münich (2021), in the past 15 years, children in Czechia are applying for VET education because they are not able to participate in an educational program with a higher academic level due to their school results. Learning the craft is on the fringe, not only on the fringe of the interest of schoolchildren and their parents but also of politics and society itself. I aim to describe the role of school institutions in pupils 'navigation through the social landscape, describe the influence of the hidden curriculum and teachers' practice on the self-identification of pupils in vocational schools and the problematics of research with teens in precarious position. The hidden curriculum is not explicitly taught; it is an unwritten curriculum transmitted in the school through the interactions of social actors and internalising social norms and values. It aims to show the structures of formal education in the Czech Republic leading to low social mobility, not utilising the potential of an individual in society and creating a "working class" with injured dignity (Sennett and Cobb1993). This school ethnography of a VAT class describes the passage of pupils with low educational ambitions through apprenticeship education and their teachers, who fail in their role as navigators of a smooth and safe passage through the social landscape of adolescence. 4
I describe the structures of formal secondary education on the basis of a three-year research of a secondary vocational school, where I worked as a teacher.